Making and getting lots of phone calls was a raison d’etre for millions of Millennial girls in particular, but once we hit our thirties, the phone became the equivalent of junk mail. Did this have unintended consequences?
Millennials, especially those of us on the older end who were born in Reagan’s second term, are a generation of many dualities. Duality comes up in so much of my work and I always thought it was just because of a vast amount of personal circumstances and life events.
But it turns out my entire generation is riddled with them. Our lives have been colored by hope and doom alike, and we watched technology and communications advance at different speeds.
We saw the end of the old world and the last decade of relative stability and prosperity for many Americans…
Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones is treated by the media crit community as this virtually satirical character who’s been touted as unrealistic by viewers, particularly younger viewers coming across the show for the first time. But as my forties loom closer, I find her MORE realistic and relatable than ever before.
I distinctly recall this conversation I had with this guy I slept with after a punk show in 2010.
“So, what’s your plans?” This was the exact conversation I wanted to avoid. I somehow woke up in some bumblefuck place in Suffolk County, a ways off from my safe and solitary dumpy domicile in The Bronx. Being a grad student broker than Mike Pence after Biden’s inauguration, and the fact that it would take a couple years before rideshare apps would become de rigeur, I unfortunately had to depend on this lamentable one-shot deal for a ride back to the…
I value myself SO much more after 35 than I did when I was emotionally and financially insecure, plus chock full of untreated mental health issues in my twenties.
It’s been a few days and that nuclear take about women over 35 being totally hopeless with respect to getting married is still going wild. Shani Silver’s fantastic rebuttal to it got me thinking.
Let’s get this straight: according to the US Census Bureau, women are expected to make it to 81.7 years and life expectancy for both men and women is only increasing overall.
But there is this entire force in the media and a cottage industry based on around telling women that literally more than half their lives are going to be worthless.
Excuse me, do I have a price tag on my ass I wasn’t aware of?
Because if I do, then…
Maybe we shouldn’t obsess about data and and just live our best lives.
So, I read this piece earlier about educated women being less likely to pair off after 35 and it gave me pause. I think the author raised a few good points, but to me it still sounds like fear-mongering. I agreed with her conclusion, but I found the messaging a bit troubling.
Browse Medium and you’ll find scads of stories about how women should fear these sad and lonely futures because beauty fades, some creepy white supremacist shit about “fertility” when women are having kids well into their forties nowadays, and yadda yadda. …
Paying a condo board instead of a landlord has been awesome on my wallet, but just because you put down roots doesn’t mean anything will grow and flourish.
I recently heard someone I know describe their recent home purchase as “putting down roots”. I can see why: for most people, it’s not a routine transaction. You intend to buy a place for keeps, or at least for a long enough time to make it worth the hassle and upfront costs.
Buying or selling a home is a long and stressful process. It’s been touted as the cornerstone of the American Dream that kept being squeezed from Millennials’ grasp, if it was even accessible to you and your family to begin with. I hail from a land where lifelong…
This dating sim game is as unapologetically queer and horny as it is heartwarming, and proof that sex and romance don’t completely vanish in old age
Why are most love stories, in virtually any medium but particularly in video games, limited to the early years of life? There’s got to be a boundless number of college-centered dating sims, RPGs, and visual novels, when frankly, you couldn’t give me a million bucks and a paid off condo on Miracle Mile to be 21 again.
Later Daters does the complete opposite and focuses on sex and romance in old age: something we’re honestly long overdue for in a video game, as older characters are often not represented at all. …
We don’t want to be parents, enough already
Another day, another filtering of my Medium and Twitter comments when I talk about things from a childfree woman’s perspective. With the big 4–0 looming, I’m being slammed by supposedly “well-meaning” men who love to concern-troll me with the “biological clock” line. (Biological crock of shit, you mean.)
And yes, I say men, because I notice it’s mostly well-off white Gen X men doing this.
Crapping on people who don’t want kids doesn’t have a specific gender bent, but I’ve noticed this particular cohort seems to love getting up in my business lately. …
Forget the cheesy romcom aspects, those have been critiqued to death: ‘You’ve Got Mail’ was an unwitting oracle of New York City’s demise, Internet culture, and technology as a whole
The Internet tasked me with ranting about You’ve Got Mail after I snarked on Sleepless in Seattle.
Okay fine, just a couple shitposters on Twitter did.
What can I say, I love writing for Fanfare because I can pick whatever media I want and write it off my taxes because I generate royalties from the whole shebang. Lockdown isn’t over yet and I apparently love torturing myself, so I pulled up You’ve Got Mail after numerous Twitter mutuals said I should watch it.
I was honestly curious after hearing the buzz. After all, I’m writing a period piece taking place between 1999–2001. I figured it couldn’t hurt to dive into an artifact of the late 90s to…
Women are encouraged to be the exact opposite of who they are, and strive for things that may be completely different from what they actually do.
At the dawn of my 36th year on this ball of dirt and hydrocarbons, I’ve had many realizations about my own existence, the human experience, and social constructs in general.
Quarantine will do that, especially when your friends were already gentrified out before this and you’ve decided to change course when society reopens.
My conclusion? Women are basically told to be the exact opposite of who they are. Who we actually are is never enough.
You’re told to lose weight until you fit some arbitrary standard, even if your thinnest is still considered fat in the grand scheme of things. But if you’re also deemed too thin, then you’re told to eat a cheeseburger.
Got stick-straight hair? Grab that curling iron and get some supermodel curls! But ick, CURLY hair…
We live in a data-driven society now: how data gets interpreted is a HUGE deal, and small business data is no exception. An oft-cited SBA figure was cherry-picked to make people think a 9–5 job is your only option.
People think the United States is a country that supposedly loves entrepreneurship. Well…only incredibly rich ones who grace the cover of Forbes, Fast Company, and so on whose parents paid their Stanford tuition or have been some type of oligarch for generations. For the rest of us peons? In my day to day life, I constantly encounter people who say some variation of “How come you don’t want a regular job? Being an independent consultant and managing video game sales sounds SO hard!”
Because I’d rather get a pap smear from Edward Scissorhands than be someone’s employee ever again, thanks…
